Gates Supersedes Schuyler

St. Leger continued the siege. The garrison bravely held out; and Colonel Willett went from the fort stealthily down the Mohawk Valley with a message from Gansevoort to Schuyler, asking for relief. The sagacious general perceived the importance of beating back St. Leger, as a part of the means for securing the expected victory over Burgoyne. He called a council of officers, and proposed to send a detachment up the valley. They opposed the measure because the army was then too weak to check the march of Burgoyne. The general persisted in his opinion of the necessity and humanity of sending a force to the relief of Fort Schuyler. He was walking the floor with great anxiety of mind, when he heard one of the officers say in a low tone of voice, "He means to weaken the army." That was an epitome of all the slanders which had been uttered since the evacuation of Ticonderoga. He heard the charge of implied treason with the hottest indignation. Turning quickly toward the slanderer, and unconsciously biting into several pieces a clay pipe which he was smoking, he exclaimed in a voice that awed the whole company into silence: "Gentlemen, I shall take the responsibility upon myself; where is the brigadier who will take command of the relief? I shall beat up for volunteers to-morrow." General Arnold, ever ready for deeds of daring, at once stepped forward and offered his services. Before noon the next day (August 13), eight hundred stalwart men were enrolled for the expedition. They were chiefly from the Massachusetts brigade of General Larned. They followed their brave leader with perfect confidence, and won success. By prowess, audacity and stratagem, Arnold compelled the invader to raise the siege of Fort Schuyler within ten days after he left the camp at Stillwater. At Fort Dayton (German Flats) he found a half-idiotic Tory, a prisoner, who had been tried for crimes and condemned to death. His mother begged for his pardon. It was promised by Arnold under the condition that he should go, with a friendly Oneida Indian, among the savages in St. Leger's camp, and by representing the Americans on the march against them as extremely numerous, frighten them away. The prisoner agreed. He had several shots fired through his coat, and with these evidences of "a terrible engagement with the enemy," he ran, almost out of breath, among the Indians, declaring that he had just escaped from the approaching Americans. Pointing toward the trees and the sky, he said, "They are as many as the leaves and the stars at night." Very soon his companion, the Oneida, came running from another direction, with the same story. The Indians, thoroughly alarmed, held a pow-wow--a consultation with the Great Spirit--and resolved to fly. No persuasion could hold them. Away they went as fast as their feet could carry them, toward Oswego and the more western wilds, followed by their pale-faced confreres, pell-mell, in a race for the safe bosom of Lake Ontario. So the siege of Fort Schuyler was raised; and so ended the formidable invasion from the west.

The expulsion of St. Leger and his followers was a severe blow to the hopes of Burgoyne. This disaster following so closely upon that near Bennington, staggered him. His visions of conquest, and orders, and perhaps a peerage for himself, vanished. His doom was pronounced. His army was already conquered in fact--it needed very little to make it so, in form. The wise policy and untiring exertions of General Schuyler had accomplished the ruin of the invading army.

The harvests were now nearly over; the spirits of the patriots were greatly revived by recent events; public confidence in General Schuyler, so rudely shaken by misfortune and slander, was rapidly returning, and as a consequence recruits for the Northern Army were flocking into camp, with daily-increasing volume. Schuyler was preparing to march to an easy victory over his hopelessly crippled foe, and so win the laurels which he fairly deserved, when, on the 19th of August, General Gates arrived in camp, and took command of the army, in accordance with the following resolution passed by Congress:

"Resolved, That Major-General Schuyler be directed to repair to headquarters.

"That General Washington be directed to order such general officer as he shall think proper to repair immediately to the Northern Department, to relieve Major-General Schuyler in his command there."

This was evidently the work of intrigue, faction, and conspiracy. Washington, who was then in his camp at Germantown, near Philadelphia, was fully aware of the schemes of Gates and his friends, and would not consent to be a scapegoat for them; so he declined to nominate a successor to Schuyler, and the Congress proceeded to appoint Gates to that office. They clothed him with powers which they had never conferred on his predecessor, and voted him all the aid Schuyler had ever asked, and which had been withheld. The patriotic general felt the indignity keenly, yet he did not allow his personal grievances to interfere with his duty to his country. He received Gates cordially, furnished him with every kind of useful information respecting the army, and offered him all the aid in his power to give. This generosity was requited by jealousy and coldness. Yet this despicable treatment did not abate Schuyler's efforts to secure the defeat of Burgoyne, although he knew the laurels that would thereby be won would be placed on the brow of his undeserving successor.